Tri-county organization promotes honeybee awareness, education

As a beekeeper, 70-year-old Ted Kaminski of Hastings thrives on observing and learning about the behavior of honeybees.

“I think it’s the adventure of housing a wild creature, taking care of them, the biology of the honeybee and how sophisticated they are,” Kaminski said of his interest.

For over 25 years, Kaminski has strived to educate others about the insects that have mystified him since childhood.

2 Cs and a Bee serves as the beekeepers’ association for Cambria, Clearfield and Blair counties. The organization welcomes beekeepers, as well as those who are simply interested in learning more about honeybees, to participate in their monthly meetings.

“Our main objective is to really educate people about (honeybees’) importance,” Kaminski said.Kaminski co-founded the association in 1987 after hosting movie nights in his garage once a month showing reel-to-reel tapes about honeybees to fellow enthusiasts. He started advertising the educational movie nights in a local newspaper, and eventually people started swarming to Kaminski’s house to learn about beekeeping. As attendance grew, Kaminski and other beekeepers turned the gathering into a club, and today more than 150 people belong to 2 Cs and a Bee.

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“You don’t have to have bees to be a member of the association. You just have to be interested and willing to support them,” Dysart resident Kennith Hoover, 57, said.

Hoover serves as the association’s president — answering phone calls, coordinating educational opportunities and gathering information for the organization.

“If we don’t educate, people are naturally afraid of bees because they sting,” Hoover said. “There’s no need to fear honeybees because they sting for three reasons: defend their life, defend their home, or you did something stupid.”According to Hoover, the association’s monthly meetings, which are hosted at various locations throughout the three counties, consist of a short business meeting followed by an educational program. The meetings’ topics change in accordance with the season, such as the meeting on March 17, which focused on how to manage beehives during the spring.

“That’s when a lot of learning takes place because you get older and younger beekeepers talking and sharing ideas,” Hoover said. “They can hash out their difficulties.”Honeybees are important to the environment mainly because of their ability to pollinate, according to Hoover.

“You have to have good pollination for trees and plants to reproduce,” Hoover said. “For example, apple trees will blossom and those blossoms have to be pollinated for them to set fruit. If it is not properly pollinated, the fruit gets deformed, and it’s not a nice-looking apple.”

Honeybee pollination is directly and indirectly responsible for the creation of many different foods, according to Hoover.

“We can live without honey, even though it is sacrilegious for me to say that,” Hoover said. “The good, solid variety of food that we have is because of honeybees. It’s not just the fruits and vegetables. It’s also in the livestock feed, like alfalfa.”

Hoover currently has 11 hives and grooms the plant life in his yard to benefit his honeybees’ desire for nectar, which sweetens the honey that bees produce.

“People cuss dandelions something ferocious, but bees love them,” Hoover said. “They aren’t a huge source of pollen, but they have a lot of nectar. When you come to my house, you’re going to see a yellow carpet of dandelions with beautiful violets.”

In addition to hosting informationals meetings, 2 Cs and a Bee communicates with Penn State University and Penn State Altoona’s agriculture departments to share resources concerning honeybees and the threats they face today.

“Bees are born with a college education. We’re still learning,” Hoover said. “They will do things that are totally against what you just read.”

One of the topics the association and the universities are working to learn more about is the colony collapse disorder, an issue which surfaced several years ago when Dave Hackenburg, a beekeeper in Florida, observed a bizarre phenomenon occurring within his box hives, a type of artificial beehive used for keeping bees.

“(Hackenberg) noticed he had colonies that were strong, and a week later those colonies were gone,” Hoover said. “The boxes were there. The bees were gone. You would find a very small amount of bees and maybe the queen and young brood just abandoned. All of the rest of the bees were gone.”

Researchers have yet to uncover a cause for the abrupt disappearance of honeybees, but the publicity surrounding the insects has benefitted the association and beekeeping industry in general.